Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Halloween attire 2013

Most of the family decided to go with a Wreck It Ralph theme. It was optional to participate, but those that did, LOVED it. The girls planned, talked and plotted every spare moment for weeks about how we would accomplish every detail of the costumes. Best of all, Clair continues to only refer to everyone by their character names. She calls Jared- Ralph or "the kind, bad guy", Lydia- Candlehead, Jeff- Felix or "the good guy", and herself - "the Glitch."

Jefferson made the cutest Fix-It-Felix. His costume was by far the easiest. I got the hat on Amazon, and the patches from A Little Crafty. We had the pants and shirt, thrifted the boots, and I made the belt with notions from JoAnn's. I lucked out and found the wooden hammer at an estate sale a week ago. All it needed was a couple coats of gold paint.

Clarissa started the theme when she wanted to be Vanellope Von Schweets. I was hoping to find some of her costume pre-made, but no luck, I had to make everything. I used pink shoelaces from Walmart for the strings in her hoodie and embroidery floss for the stitching. I painted white microfiber tights with craft paint, placing cardboard inside them and taping off the stripes with painters tape. For her licorice hair tie, I wrapped a fabric trim (Walmart) around wire. For the sprinkles in her hair, I colored adhesive name tags. Then, using a hole puncher I cut the circles, removed the backing and stuck them to her hair. The peppermints were glued to velcro and stuck in her hair. Warning! use as little of the velcro as possible, it really sticks to the hair and can hurt when pulling it out.

I think the Candlehead hat, was my favorite project this year. I used some old mouse ears from Disneyland as the base. I simply ripped off the ears and painted it brown. I used felt for the rest of the construction. To make the whipped swirl on top, I loosely rolled a piece of felt with wire in the middle, securing the ends with glue. With the wire in the middle it was easy to manipulate the felt into the perfect swirl. The candle is also rolled-up felt with embroidery floss wrapped around it. I made the skirt, thrifted the jacket (lucky find), and had the shirt and tights.

My husband was such a good sport to dress up with the kids. Finding his overalls was a nightmare. Apparently overalls are hard to find around Halloween. I went to probably 20 thrift stores, with no luck. Finally, I found a large pair of stretchy brown pants and knew I had to transform them into overalls. I made up the bib, sewed the decorative stitching on both the bib and pants, and added the overall buckles. In the end I was very happy with the results. Even if the fabric for the bib doesn't match perfectly, I think they look better than blue jean overalls would have looked. I thrifted his orange shirt: it originally had a collar, which I cut off.

Of course no theme would be complete without a trunk to match it, right?

And here are our other costumes:

Kate is really into cats right now, so dressing as a black cat was a no brainer. The key to this costume was a black feather boa I got at JoAnn's for a few dollars. I constructed her tail by wrapping the black boa around a long wire and attached it to a felt belt. Here is the trick, the belt had two pieces of supporting wire sandwiched between two pieces of felt in the back. I used my glue gun for all of this, no sewing. I made arm bands and leg warmers out of a fuzzy knit fabric (JoAnn's). I also glued extra boa to the wrist of the arm bands and around my felt cat ears.

My oldest decided he was too cool to dress up this year and I kept telling him he wouldn't get any candy. That is how we came up with this costume at the last minute. He loved it. It's probably not politically correct, but was meant in fun.